The Price of Hufflepuff
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: AU. The Sorting Hat has an ongoing task left to it by the founders... unfortunately, as Lily Evans discovers to her cost. One-shot. Rating: M. Warning: This piece is identified as 'Parody'. Author Notes expanded slightly, 11th September, 2016.


(Author Notes slightly expanded, 11th September, 2016)

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following short piece takes place in a universe where Lily Evans' 1971 encounter with the Sorting Hat goes somewhat differently from canon. It consists of two scenes, the first featuring Lily's sorting, and the second taking place three and a bit years later. This is a one-shot.

This piece is rated 'M' and identified as 'Parody' to be on the safe side. It assumes a probably non-original universe Helga Hufflepuff.

* * *

 _Hogwarts, The Great Hall, September 1st, 1971_

 _You don't want to be in Hufflepuff by any chance?_

It was strange for eleven year old Lily Evans to be sitting there, in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, with the Sorting Hat on her head. She had watched the Sorting so far with interest, and she wasn't sure if she'd been imagining it, but she _thought_ that the Sorting Hat had actually started to glow as it sent the two students immediately before her to their houses (both to Hufflepuff, actually).

 _No._ Lily thought back at the voice in her head.

 _Thank Merlin for that. If someone wants to be Hufflepuff, I practically_ _have_ _to send them there, you see, even if that means 'extracting' qualities or personality traits that would otherwise be unsuitable for a member of that house. And right now, I'm full up to the brim with stuff that's had to come out of the most recent few pupils who all insisted on 'Hufflepuff'. Of course, I have instructions on where and how to unload such things… Hmm. Someone's told you that Slytherin's quite a good house – the ideal place to be?_

 _Yes, Severus. Do you know him?_

 _No, but that doesn't matter. What does is that I recognise the names of the next few pupils due to be sorted after you, and I'm sure that at least two of them can be counted upon to be certain 'Hufflepuffs'. And I really can't afford to risk that they're going to be 'ideal' candidates, with no need for any kind of modifications at all. I'm really and truly sorry about this, Miss Evans, but this is an emergency, and I'm going to have to either deliberately mis-sort someone who actually wants to be in Hufflepuff or to potentially 'blow' if I don't do this.._

And the Hat opened what passed for its mouth and shouted 'SLYTHERIN!' as it unloaded a torrent of incipient lust, deviousness, viciousness, and seething ambition onto the head on which it currently sat.

* * *

 _Hogwarts, Somewhere in the Dungeons, Sometime in December, 1974_

Several months into her fourth year at Hogwarts, as in a remote and highly secluded stretch of dungeon corridor Martin Mulciber twitched and writhed on the floor before her (screaming silently), Lily Evans _finally_ blew through the last of the traits and emotions that the Sorting Hat had foisted upon her close to forty months earlier, and paused in her torture of the selfsame Mulciber. Well, there were _still_ a lot of things – as yet 'unspent' – which she wanted to do to Severus, when she was a bit older, but otherwise, for the first time in three and a quarter years she actually felt clear-headed, or something approaching it.

Lily blinked, and looked at her wand, and down at what she'd been doing. She cast her mind back over the past years that she'd spent at Hogwarts in Slytherin, and all the practically 'evil' things that she'd done.

And she realised how much worse her position might have been, if she hadn't done them – and how much worse her position could get now, if she _stopped_.

Ahh…

She raised her wand, twirled it through a different set of motions, and non-verbally resumed the torture.

It wasn't as if she could _stop_ being who she'd been up to date at Hogwarts; not after what she'd already done; not if she wanted to _survive_.

Of course, running on her 'own steam' rather than what had been passed onto her by the Hat, things were bound to be slightly different… just not so much so as to put herself at risk, she hoped…

* * *

Author Notes:

In canon, apparently a whole quarter of the Hogwarts population is 'evil' (or at least callous and/or to some extent uncaring) as far as the principle protagonist is concerned. I thought it might be interesting to offer one perhaps slightly silly explanation of why/how this state of affairs might come to be – if that is actually the situation at Hogwarts. In this universe, the Sorting Hat, as far as it is able to do so, 'sucks' all the non-Hufflepuff qualities out of pupils who want to go there, and dumps them into any Slytherin-bound pupils who come along afterwards. (For what it matters, Helga is assumed in this universe to have 'programmed' the Sorting Hat to do this shortly after Salazar Slytherin left Hogwarts, when Salazar wasn't around any more to object to pupils being sorted into his house being so roughly treated.)

In theory, any change which the Hat makes in this universe to personality/character isn't permanent; pupils who have had all the 'nastiness' sucked out of them, so that they can go to Hufflepuff clean and innocent, can acquire unpleasant traits and qualities over time, through their own choices and decisions anyway; and in theory, once a pupil sorted into Slytherin has 'worked through' all the nastiness which the Hat may have dumped into them at their sorting, then they can choose to stop being quite so unpleasant (or outright evil); it's just that it may not be terribly _safe_ for them by that point (at least whilst they're still at Hogwarts) to suddenly do so...

Under the way that the Sorting Hat operates in this universe, if two pupils in a row want to be sorted into Slytherin, then the second of those pupils will have no negative qualities offloaded into them, by the Hat, because the Hat will have already dumped anything it contained into the first pupil. Lucky second pupil... maybe.

I'm undecided whether any negative qualities that the Hat has left at the end of a sorting get held onto until the next year, or whether it slowly disperses them into the atmosphere in the headmaster's office. Or maybe the Hat simply has instructions to make sure the last pupil in the year always goes into Slytherin, no matter what, if it has any negative qualities contained at that point...

This piece is a one-shot. There may have been half an idea there for something longer, when I decided that Lily Evans would be the unfortunate victim of the Hat in this illustrative piece (after all the narrative of a sorting and its after-effects could have been that of any pupil, to demonstrate the idea) but whatever it was escaped into the aether.

* * *

Additional Clarification (11th September, 2016)

No, it's not very nice or scrupulous of Helga in this universe, the moment Salazar is gone, to start using Slytherin pupils as 'dumps' for qualities/traits removed from pupils that the Hat sends her house's way; there are several grounds on which she might possibly rationalise it (ranging from 'they (Slytherins) are all unpleasant to start with and it won't make much difference anyway' to 'they _deserve_ it'), or she simply might not care.

Godric and Rowena are assumed not to have noticed Helga's tampering with the hat; they assume that any increase in the unpleasantness of Slytherin pupils that occurs in their lifetimes is the result of bitterness/disappointment on the part of Slytherins over their founder's permanent departure from Hogwarts.


End file.
